Digitally

How to spell digitally

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce digitally

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does digitally mean?

1. adverbBy means of computers or electronic technology that represents information as numerical data.

Digitally in a sentence

• The museum has digitally archived its entire photo collection.

• Customers can now sign the contract digitally from their phones.

Where does digitally come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin digitus, which literally meant 'finger' or 'toe', and by extension a single numeral, because people counted on their fingers. From digitus came the adjective digitalis, relating to fingers, and English borrowed 'digit' in the late 1300s for both a finger and a single whole number below ten. The adjective 'digital' followed, at first meaning 'of the fingers' and later, from the 1930s and 1940s, describing data represented as discrete numbers; the adverb 'digitally' simply adds the standard -ly ending to that. The modern computing sense bloomed in the second half of the twentieth century, so that 'digitally' now usually means 'by electronic, numerical means' rather than anything to do with fingers. The spelling is tidy once you see its three layers, digit plus al plus ly, with a single l in the adjective doubling up only because the -ly suffix supplies the second one.

How the word is built

• digit- (from Latin digitus: finger, also counting on fingers)
• -al (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)